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The word harem is Turkish. It comes from the Arabic Harām (forbidden), originally entailing "women's quarters," literally: "something forbidden or kept safe," from the root Harama "he guarded, forbade." The HRM is common to Arabic words entailing forbidden. The Hebrew Herem is similar. All of these words translate to an object being “sacred” or “cursed”.
A Harem is described as being , “that part of an Oriental place or house reserved for the residence of women”. It housed, not only wives, but female relatives; mother, sisters, concubines, daughters, entertainers, servants, etc. It had its beginnings in the Near East and spread to the Western World via the Ottoman Empire.
It is believed that harems first existed under the Persian, Achaemenid (559–330 BC) and (later) Iranian dynasties. The Sassanid King, Khosrau II, was reported as having a harem of 3000 wives, as well as 12,000 other females.
Unlike the women we think of today, those who laze around pools and are there solely for the Sultan’s pleasure, Persian women who occupied the harems were different. The females who occupied the royal harem played important, though underreported roles in Iranian history. They were especially significant during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. However, this claim is disputed by some Persian historians.
The harem of the Turkish Great Sultan, which was in the Topkapı Palace serraglio, typically housed several hundred - at times over a thousand - women including wives. It also housed the Sultan's mother, daughters and other female relatives, as well as eunuchs and slave girls to serve the aforementioned women. During the later periods, the sons of the Sultan also lived in the Harem until they were sixteen, when it might be considered appropriate for them to appear in the public and administrative areas of the palace. The Topkapı Harem was, in some senses, merely the private living quarters of the Sultan and his family, within the palace complex. (from wikipedia.org)
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